Hortus Artium Medievalium

Before the presentation of the 2016 campaign, the results of the campaign of 2015 are briefly cited. The completion of the excavation of the reduced church, the further analysis of its structures as well as the stratigraphical analysis allowed us to reformulate our hypothesis and advance our knowledge of the first church on the site which seems to have had a cruciform ground plan and have been built in the proto-Byzantine period. This year’s campaign was mostly carried out in the area of the Romanesque church vestibule (sector V) and of its north-east exterior (sector VI). Among most important contributions is the discovery of the large vessel found in the northern part of the vestibule whose space was clearly partitioned both in elevation (partition in bays) and at ground level (privileged burials in the central bay, infant burials in the southern bay). Numerous medieval tombs were found and excavated in the sector VI, as well as two graves from the iron age that were discovered under the medieval built tombs in front of the vestibule.

The cathedral at Le Puy is an emblematic monument of the western Middle Ages. The aim of this paper is a reinterpretation of its wall-paintings as spatial markers of a topography surrounded by an ecclesiological and liturgical discourse, translated by images and inscriptions, and deeply linked to the cathedral’s various statuses, as a cathedral and as a pilgrimage place.

From the 12th century, large crosses in « X » are painted or carved on the vault of churches’ choir, or integrated into mosaics of pavement, as in Saint-Bertin of Saint-Omer, Saint-André of Rosans and Ganagobie. As projection of the vault on the ground, they take part in the organization of the liturgical space. In our opinion, they also serve to legitimize the laic authority, principal sponsor of these settings.

The paper examines an important and, at the same time, little known parietal icon of the late 13^th century, kept in the crypt of the church of Santissima Trinità - Santa Lucia in Brindisi, representing St. Nicholas of Myra. Of the fresco, considerable in size, is offered a thorough reading which, starting with iconographic elements until now escaped to criticism, clarifies the meaning and functions of the image inside the cultual environment of Brindisi, linked by close cultural and artistic relationships with the Christian East. In virtue of the high executive quality, of the extreme care in the rendering of details and, above all, of the fidelity to the archetypal icons of the bishop of Myra, particularly to those kept in the monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, the fresco qualifies as one of the best examples of monumental mural icon of the high Middle Ages, but also as one of the finest surviving images of Sinaite or crusader matrix representing St. Nicholas.

The chapel of Yeghvard was built in the first third of the 14^th century. The small local principality was one of the rare areas in Armenia where an artistic activity was able to continue during the tough period of Mongol domination. The three-storeyed building comprises a chapel-mausoleum, an oratory, and a bell-tower in the shape of a small rotunda, a structure of Antique origin, popular at that period in Armenia. The Yeghvard chapel distinguishes itself by its elegance, the abundance and quality of its sculpted decoration, widely open to contacts with the Muslim world, and by the presence, under its cupola, of a row of Persian tiles dating from the end of the 13^th - beginning of the 14^th cent. Its architect Shahik was also the author, in 1314, of the mausoleum of Khachen-Dorbatly, built some 200 km to the East, for a Muslim lord.

The Early Christian basilicas of Chersonesos in the Crimea have been studied for over a century and a half. There are about 20 monuments known today; almost all of them were discovered in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Despite this, they remain poorly studied. Anatolij L. Yakobson’s book “Early Medieval Chersonesos” (1959) remains the only generalizing work in which the architecture, the mosaic and marble décor of the churches are examined together and in the context of the history of the city. This outcome is due largely to the way in which Chersonesos has been studied. During the last decades of the 19^th century and the first decades of the 20^th century, the main role was played by the St Petersburg Archaeological Commission. Unfortunately, it never succeeded in assigning professional archaeologists and architects to the works in Chersonesos. Because of this, we don’t have exact information regarding the current location of many of the finds; also absent is a precise documentation (plans, sections, elevations, details) for the greater part of the architectural monuments of Chersonesos. It reveals that in the post-Soviet era, the “item-centric” approach has prevailed: the fragments of ceramics and the coins were analyzed rather than the architecture. The meaning of the large collection of marble works from Proconnesos’ workshops is completely denied for the dating of the monuments.